


Blood, Tior and copious amounts of mercury

by Soph_The_Defunct



Category: Portal Stories Mel - Fandom, psm
Genre: M/M, PSM - Freeform, Portal Stories Mel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:34:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27773113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soph_The_Defunct/pseuds/Soph_The_Defunct
Summary: in a universe affectionately named the 'Bastard AU', Mel finds her way back into the facility and back to Virgil, meeting his family, learning of his life, his universe and his demons, as well as rediscovering her own.
Relationships: Rainbow Core/Virgil
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	1. faraway transmissions

“See you later…. Mel.”

That was the last interaction Mel had had with another living being. She still remained amazed that he was so alive. He had cried when he was injured and smiled at her awkwardly when she looked at him. He had let his emotions cloud his logic, or vice versa. He was simply so… So human.

There was a lot less up here than she had expected. Occasionally she’d think she heard the ghost of a noise that sounded like soft ramblings, coming from nowhere and everywhere. Perhaps she was going insane. That stasis chamber ought to have some side-effects, after all.  
There was also the problem of there being absolutely no resources up here. There was no food, water or grief counselling. She was realising quickly that she had no chance up here.

Unfolding her legs, she rose from her hiding place. There had to be some way back down, right?  
Much of the area had fallen into disrepair. Stepping over various rubble, she traversed the area for rooms she hadn’t yet been into in a desperate attempt for something to help her. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she noted that the main attraction was a large panel with various buttons and futuristic doodads on it.

Stepping toward the panel, she read ‘COMMUNICATION WITH UPPER FACILITY’  
How convenient.

She held down the large red button tentatively, hearing radio static crackle to life. This was vaguely familiar to her. Radio transmissions.  
She leaned into the panel, opening her mouth to utter her first word since she was placed in stasis.  
“Virgil.”

The Virgil in question was leaning back in his chair, screwdriver in his mouth, feet crossed on the desk. He was, of course, thinking very professional thoughts such as thoughts of the frog he saw the other day. He’d never seen a frog before that point. They were very odd. He had decided that he didn’t like them very much.

A sharp exhale brought him back to non-frog-related reality. He swivelled in his chair to see his co-worker entering the room. She had red hair and fair skin, dotted with freckles. Her blue eyes went nicely with her punk outfit. Taking the screwdriver out of his mouth and spinning it around his fingers, Virgil offered a slightly awkward smile.

“Jos.” He reported upon her entry.

Jos, or Joscelyn, gave him a fleeting glance before throwing a small cardboard box at him. It hit him in the stomach and he fumbled for it uselessly before it hit the ground and he picked it up disappointedly. A box of mercury-laden sweets. Nice.

He gave a slightly more genuine smile to Joscelyn.  
“Thanks.” He gave her a slight nod.  
“no prob,” Jos responded before sitting down at her down desk. “oh, by the way. You got a call.”  
“oh?” He leaned forward curiously, stimming slightly with his hands.  
“yeah, from one of those, uhhh….” She clicked her fingers rhythmically, trying to remember whatever it was she was referring to. “Panel things. That communicate with various parts of the facility.”  
“ohhhh.” He paused before getting up to find the Maintenance Wing’s ‘panel thing’.  
One of the nice things about the Maintenance Wing was that it compensated for the height of its workers. He never had to duck under the doorways of his workplace, which was nice for a man of 6’5.

Virgil stretched as he walked down the short corridor, took a sharp right and ended up in the wrong room.  
“oh—sorry, sorry.” He ducked out of the room and entered the one directly next to it.  
He sat down in the chair in front of the panel, put on the headset and used his feet to pull the chair forward a little, adjusting the microphone on the headset.  
“Hello?” He asked into the static.  
A strange voice answered.  
“Virgil.” It spoke softly. “it—it’s Mel.”  
He was dumbfounded.  
“I--.. Mel?” He responded.  
“Yes.” The voice returned.  
“Faen- uh—d-do—w- where are you? Wh- doooo you need me to come, uh, come get you…? O-or something…?”  
“please.”  
“a-alright—uh- sit tight- I’ll get over there as fast as I can! Try not to, erh, die. Please.”

That was that. Now how the hell was he going to get there? There had to be a way, there had to! The universe wouldn’t’ve just given him this opportunity and then taken it from him. He span in his chair idly, trying to summon a stroke of genius.

Nothing was coming to him. He got up, stumbling dizzily for a moment, before walking out of the room to ask his co-workers if they had any ideas. He wasn’t good at asking for help, but he needed to. The life of—wait a second. His mind had just referred to Mel as ‘someone he loved’. He barely knew her. Fuck’s sake.

Virgil ran his hand along the wall until he reached his workshop and entered the doorway, causing Joscelyn to look up at him.  
“You look worried.” She pointed out, “What’s up?”  
“eheh- uhm, yeah, about.. That. Uh. Dooo you happen to know any way up? To the uh, to the, y’know. The surface?”  
Joscelyn gave him a weird look. “Uhh.. No.”  
“fuck.”  
“Why do you wanna go there?” She asked him, sitting backwards on her chair to look at him.  
“Well, uhm…” He exhaled deeply. He would have to come clean. “There’s a, uhm. A human. Who helped me when I was… Gone. Helped me get back. And she’s up there and I don’t know how to get to her.”  
Joscelyn studied him for a moment. “a human?”  
“Yes, I know, it sounds… Weird. But there’s a human. And I don’t want her to die!” He snapped, before recoiling. “sorry.”  
The red-haired girl considered the idea for a moment. “I think the only option we’d really have would be to ask… her.”  
“her? But… She’s not exactly, y’know. Generous.”  
Joscelyn shrugged. “s’all that’s going, I’m afraid, my good bastard.”  
Virgil’s tail – the long, thick cable protruding from his behind – moved between his legs at the thought of confronting her about the issue. He took a deep breath.

“Alright… I have an idea.”

Granted, it wasn’t a very good idea.

Scrap metal wasn’t very hard to come by, the maintenance wing was full of it. It also stank, but the narrator digresses. The only thing Virgil knew that she feared was crazy humans and explosions. What explodes? Rocket Launchers. There was ammo at his disposal, so he just needed to make a launcher out of scrap metal. Easy enough.

From the hallway came the heavy footsteps of everyone’s favourite member of the maintenance crew. Hyperactive, extremely loud and strong, those were the words that everyone associated with Adi.

“HI VIRGIL!! ARE YOU WORKING ON YOUR PLAN TO SAVE YOUR GIRLFRIEND?” That was supposedly Adi’s inside voice.  
Virgil flinched.  
“A-DI! I’m—not even -- you—rrgh!” he returned, his tail sticking straight up in the air out of embarrassment.  
Adi giggled, slapping him on the back with the force of a thousand horsepower. He flinched.  
“DON’T WORRY, I’M JUST FUCKING WITH YOU, VIRGIE.” She snickered. “MY GIRLFRIEND IS MUCH PRETTIER THAN YOURS, ANYWAY.”

He sighed exasperatedly, continuing work on the gun. It was so silly to think that he was actually creating a rocket launcher to confront her and rescue.. A human. The human was by far the strangest part of the equation.

To be truthful, the idea of an attraction to Mel made his skin crawl. He wasn’t attracted to women, and certainly not human women. Sure, she was an aesthetically pleasing person, and sure, he didn’t want her to die, but he had no inkling of attraction to her. That girl was just a friend, and that was it, forever. Of course, the rest of the maintenance crew, in their classic fashion of strange friendship, made it a point to tease him about being gay, even though most of the ones who were teasing him were gay themselves. This included our aggressive ball of sunshine, Adi, who was currently stealing Jos’ pocky.

“Y’KNOW,” she started, mouth full, “I REALLY CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE DOING THIS FOR A HUMAN.”  
Virgil sighed. “I can’t either, bud.”

He picked up the launcher carefully, feeling it over for any cracks or breaks in the scrap metal. A part of metal that stuck up from the rest somehow got between his plates of ‘skin’ and pulled it off.

“oh, ow” he muttered nonchalantly before clicking the plate back into place. He moved his hand a little to make sure the plate was where it should be before resuming work on the launcher.

“CAN I MAKE A GUN TOO?!” Adi asked, still yelling as always.  
“uh- what? I-I thought you didn’t care about humans.”  
“WELL, I MEAN. SHE’S STILL A PERSON, YEAH?!”  
That was a good point. Nobody could argue with that logic.  
He hoped.  
“Sure, the more the merrier.”  
“GREAT!!”  
Adi grabbed some metal and started working. Virgil had the aperture equivalent of WikiHow open, so she followed along with that as well.  
As time passed, more members of the Maintenance Crew trickled in, asked what they were doing, and joined in on the fun. It was just now starting to dawn on Virgil how cartoonishly stupid this plan was, but he’d already made a functional rocket launcher, so it was far too late. He sat on the desk across the room from where everyone was workshopping guns and watched.

Some more time passed, Virgil was just stimming idly in his own little world when Adi punched his shoulder to get his attention.  
“WE’RE READY, VIRGIE!!”  
He blinked, taking a moment to come back to reality. “Oh, great. Are.. You guys sure you wanna come? I-I mean, y’know, it’s—” he stammered for a moment, before Adi punched him again.  
“WHY WOULD WE MAKE THESE EPIC WEAPONS IF WE DIDN’T WANNA COME, YOU IDIOT?!”  
Virgil smiled gently.  
“I can’t argue with that. Let’s go.”

Mel waited by the radio panel. She had laid down on the floor to save her energy.  
She waited.  
And waited.  
And waited.  
Something alerted her to another presence in the room with her. She hadn’t heard anything, but she simply knew. She looked over to the side to see a pink-eyed android with long arms approaching her. Maybe this was how Virgil planned to get her back?

The android tilted its head at her momentarily. “Thank you for assuming the party associate submission position.”

Mel found herself being dragged back into the depths of Aperture.

“ _You know, I really didn’t expect you to be unable to fight the party associate off.”_

Virgil punched the wall next to the panel furiously. Why wasn’t the code working? This was supposed to open the door to Her part of the facility. He put the code in a few more times out of desperation. 2-0-5-6. 2…0...5...6. Nothing.

“ _You managed to escape out of my sight while I was unconscious and evade rapidly rising Aperture Science Subject Removal Fluid, but you can’t overpower a robot?”_

Alex stepped forward. He had darkish skin, not that he could remember where he came from. He had a blind, white eye and blonde spiky hair, complimenting his messy clothes.

“Let me” he spoke, his soft Kiwi accent bouncing on his tongue.

Virgil stepped back from the panel to let Alex try.

2-0-5-6.

Alex pressed the enter button rhythmically, instead of simply pressing it once.

Enter… Enter… Enter… Enter-Enter-Enter… Enter… Enter… Enter.

An SOS signal. 

The door slid open.

“Hah-!” Virgil breathed a relieved laugh. “I-I… Forgot about that.”

They started into Her side. 

“ _A bronze olympic medal winner… How sad. Not even gold. I’m sure your family was disappointed when they were alive.”_

The Maintenance crew was closing in on her lair. Virgil led the group. He had long memorised the way to Her through the complex maze of catwalks between chambers.

“ _I suppose we’ll have to see whether you’ll disappoint me t--”_

“STOP RIGHT THERE!!!” 

GLaDOS groaned, turning to the entrance to her lair. The one who yelled was a short girl, heavily muscled with straight brown hair over her toned shoulders. That girl’s name was Adi. The least competent member of the Maintenance Crew. Only, the rest of the crew was with her. With…. Large weapons, put together haphazardly. 

Mel’s eyes lit up. There he was, the only familiar android here, Virgil. He looked a lot less damaged than he did when she met her down in the junkyard, but she didn’t have the time to look over him thoroughly. He also seemed to have a homemade rocket launcher over his shoulder. She made a confused face.

“YOU LET THE PRETTY HUMAN GO OR WE BLOW YOU UP!!” 

GLaDOS sighed. She could easily just run a script and cause all of the weak little androids trespassing in her lair to spontaneously die. But she had a better idea.

She moved on her chassis like a snake, swaying gently from side to side.

“ _You created…. Explosive weapons. To save a human.”_

“Yeah we fucking did!” Jos was the one to pipe up this time.

“YOU CAN TELL OUR AIS NOT TO LIKE HUMANS AS MUCH AS YOU WANT BUT SHE’S STILL SAPIENT!!”

“ _Hmm…”_ She narrowed her eyes at Mel. _“How about I cut you a deal?”_

Virgil narrowed his eyes back at GLaDOS. “What kind of deal…?”

She chuckled. _“You can have her. She’s all yours. But…”_

“But?”  
 _“I want to install a device on you to record you. See how you interact. If you try to uninstall it, you will die, and I will turn your reassembly off. If you do as I say, she can come with you. For a while.”_

Virgil looked to his coworkers nervously. Alex whispered to him, 

“You’ll be a walking tattletail. Are you sure you want to do this just for a human?”

He looked at the floor, then looked back up at Mel. Her eyes were pleading with him, desperately asking him to take the deal. She couldn’t survive more testing.

He inhaled deeply, closing his eyes and reopening them.

It took him a moment to make the word come out of his mouth. It stuck in the back of his throat, making just a choked, unsure sound.

He took another deep breath.  
“y- uh-... h-- yes.”

That was a lot less epic than he imagined.

_“Good.”_

A claw came down from the ceiling, grabbed Virgil around the waist and plucked him from his group. He yelped, thinking for a moment he was about to be killed, before another claw came down and snaked under his hoodie, pulling a plate of skin off his chest and installing its device in him. It didn’t hurt, it just felt very strange and uncomfortable and he kept letting out small, pathetic whimpers when it touched his wires or machinery. 

Eventually, the claw placed his skin back on and dropped him nonchalantly back onto the floor.

“aAAAUGH FUCK- oOmph-”

He hit the floor heavily and groaned. He didn’t like falling one bit. Even just after that short fall, he wanted to curl up into a ball and cry, but he had more important things to tend to than his own trauma-induced upset.

He walked over to Mel, his legs still shaking from fear, and picked her up like a child, placing her on his hip. Mel seemed surprised, but didn’t seem to mind. She weighed almost nothing to him, it was like he was picking up an infant. He slowly turned away from GLaDOS and back to the exit, where the rest of the Maintenance Crew were standing, dumbstruck.

“C’mon, Mel.” He spoke to her, quietly. “Let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was originally three seperate chapters, but they proved to be far too short, so I merged them all into one longer chapter.


	2. How to be a human being

It was hard to believe she was let off that easily.  
it was in the name of science, Mel supposed, but it was still strange to her. GLaDOS was supposed to be a lethal and merciless AI with no love for anybody in her heart, Mel doubted that she really was planning to just let her off on the condition that she could supervise. There had to be a catch.

Mel was still being held like a child by Virgil. It was odd, but she decided it was nice. He wasn't as robotic as she had expected. Time and time again, it had been proven to her that he had very human traits, and it continued to amaze her. His body was made of hard metal, sure, but he had body warmth that radiated through. Not only that, but he _breathed!_ She had her arms around him to stop herself from falling in case his grip loosened, and she could feel his diaphragm rising and falling to the rhythm of his breaths. Curiously, she leaned over and placed her head against his chest to listen for whatever synthetic heartbeat he had. There was none, instead, she heard the sounds of many things ticking, hissing and clicking inside of him, as well as a quiet sound that resembled a cat's purr.

Mel looked up at Virgil to see that he was making a very confused face.

"uuuh... Are you alright?" His tone was confused and a little worried-sounding. She just smiled and nodded and placed her head back down against his chest. The sounds from his mechanisms were soothing, and she certainly needed a way to calm down. She could hear the other robots talking amongst themselves. Almost all of them were speaking to each other, including Virgil, and when he spoke, she could feel the vibrations of his voice. The only one who wasn't talking was a girl, on the shorter side. She looked asian, dark hair with some blue-green and pink streaks running through it. She had rounded glasses on, and a nice enough outfit.

Eventually, the group came up to a small door. The tall New Zealander, Alex, was the one to push it open and hold it for the rest of them. Mel looked around, and found that they were in some kind of city. Catwalks stretched across the open area like it had on Her side, but instead of test chambers, along them were buildings and structures. There was a 'road' for rail-mounted cars that zipped across it, and all sorts of robots walked around the catwalks. The city was bustling with life, just as a human city would. One thing Mel noticed about all the robots was that they shared a few common traits: they all looked like regular humans, except that a slender 'tail' protruded from their behind, a long black cable with a flesh-tone plug at the end, two silver prongs protruding from it. They also all shared large, round eyes, much rounder than a human's. They were very expressive, she could see lives unfolding before her in the activity of the city.

Virgil gently placed her down onto the catwalk beside him and gave her a little pat on the head.

"Well, Mel, welcome to Cyvubin, the city of the aproids. And, I suppose... Your new home." He gave a nervous chuckle and smiled down at her. She smiled back up at him, but confusion welled in her. She opened her mouth, for a moment forgetting how to speak, and when she did, her voice was hoarse and quiet. Not the confident deliverance she once had.

"Ap.... Roid...?" She asked tentatively.

Virgil grinned and pointed to himself. "That's us! Aperture Science Mobile Android Device, it stands for. Well. Not stands for, is SHORT for. Eheh."

He hadn't changed at all from how she remembered him. Well, personality-wise at least. His looks had changed a lot. Mel found herself lost in thought as she walked with the group, digging through her memory of her last time in Aperture.

"Hey! Heeeeey! Over here! I’m right over here!" Mel heard Virgil call frantically. Turning to where the sound came from, she was met with a slightly unpleasant sight, although it was nice to see who she had been talking to this whole time, the man who had led her up from stasis, at first pretending to be Cave, then just focusing on getting her up to where he was, and to be honest, she could see why he was so determined in that endeavour. It looked like he was dying.

He was a dark-skinned man, a very nice shade of brown somewhere between russet and cinnamon. Messy dreadlocks framed his face. He had some decent muscle definition and he looked like he would be very tall when he stood up, but at this moment, he was laying helplessly on the office floor, surrounded by rubble, his own broken parts and an unpleasant-smelling purple fluid that Mel guessed to be his equivalent of blood. The 'blood' was everywhere. Dripping from his mouth, pooled around him, caked onto him, splashed on the walls, the whole works. It went without saying that he'd lost a lot of it. Some parts of him looked severely broken, too. One of his nice, golden eyes stared at her, but the other dangled limply out of its socket, attached only by a few wires. Through his socket, she could see right through into his machinery. It was kind of unsettling. One of his legs looked to be twisted wrong at the knee, and one of his hands looked close to coming off, not to mention all the holes, dents and scratches that covered him. As Mel stared, she noticed that his face was wet from something other than 'blood', and she watched as what looked like a tear of pain rolled down his face.

Virgil stared at her nervously, for some reason, he looked scared of her. She stepped forward and started to clear the rubble off that was on top of him and offered him her hand. He smiled and took it. Turned out he was a lot heavier than she expected, and he was a lot weaker. He sighed defeatedly when she couldn't pull him up, but she started with another approach. She got down in front of him and got her hands around his chest and managed to slowly pull him up. He groaned and leaned on her for support, almost falling right back over. Mel was quickly covered in his 'blood'. He sighed shakily and started looking around the room for something he could use as a crutch of some kind. When he found none, he instead opted to limp from her support over to a desk and sat on it, leaning heavily against it.

He smiled tiredly at her. "Hey, Mel, nice to finally see you! It’s kind of dark here, though. You should turn the power on, so we can get the lights working! There’s more offices on the other side of the double doors. Check there. Turn on the power first, then help me up."

Mel felt too worried about him for that. He looked like he was a whisker away from just collapsing. She tried to support him to get him moving.

"I know it’s been a while since you had company, but just leave me for two minutes. I promise I won’t go anywhere!"

Mel ignored him and kept trying.

"I literally can’t go anywhere, please just turn the power on!"

nope.

"No, no, no. Please, turn the power on first!"

Mel insisted on continuing her efforts, despite Virgil's complaints.

"You’re not very good at listening are you?"

"Come on, seriously? Are you scared of the light or something?!"

"This stopped being funny five minutes ago!"

Mel kept on trying, mostly just to be a jerk now.

"You solve all those hard tests and you can’t figure out how to turn a light on?! Are you broken?! I didn’t know humans could break!"

one more try.

"Am I speaking in an accent that is beyond your range of hearing?! I give up. Just leave me!"

Mel chuckled to herself and started off to fix the power.

She was snapped out of her thinking by Alex waving his hand in front of her face.

"Hello~o? Anyone in there?"

Mel blinked. She was sitting on a work stool in the Maintenance Wing. It was a nice place, at least, Virgil and Jos' part of it was. She was vaguely processing everything that was happening up to this point in the back of her mind. The stool she was on was ripped and torn, but it was comfortable. Alex was staring at her with a worried expression.

"Uh.. Virgil wen' out to get some stuff for ya. He said humans can't have mercury or summin' like that." Alex stated.

Mel took a moment to process what he said, then nodded in understanding. Alex took up a chair and sat beside her.

"So, how're you holdin' up?" he asked. "Can you even talk?"

She nodded. "..hurts a little." She told him hoarsely.

"ah. Well, you don' gotta if you don' wanna. I get this is prob'ly real weird for ya, ay?"

She nodded.

Alex continued, "But, hey, you can talk to me if you don' got nobody else to, an' I bet the rest of the Maintenance Crew feel the same. We're kinda the weirdos, an' even though most aproids aren't the most fond toward humans, I'm sure we can put up with ya." he smiled warmly at her and she smiled back.

"why don't... they like humans?" she asked quietly.

"well..." Alex started, fidgeting with his hands, "okay, imagine this. You were a regular human, an' then you decided to let Aperture scan your brain and put it into a robot. You wake up as a robot, but suddenly, the human scientists are treating you like absolute garbage. They don't see you as a human anymore, not even as an animal. To them, you're not sentient in any way, and they can do whatever they want to you. They trap you in this underground facility and go about never, ever letting you see the sun." He cleared his throat. Mel's eyes were fixed on him, interested in what he was saying. "Uh... All the humans in the city were wiped out a long time ago. There are probably still some on Her side, but none over here. You've gotta be the only one. I'm real surprised that Virgil agreed to take you in, too. I dunno what he's plannin' on doin' with ya, but he's a nice guy. Took in another kid pretty recently."

Mel leaned forward curiously. "Another kid?"

"yeah. 'is name's Nigel. No older than sixteen in human years. He hangs out here sometimes, tends to stick close to Virgil an' not really talk to anyone, but once you do get 'im talkin', he might never shut up. I like the kid. Definitely got some issues, but he's a nice enough kid. Only problem is he REALLY doesn't like humans. Not sure how that'll pan out when you're both in Virgil's apartment together."

Mel looked down at the floor nervously. She was clearly an outlier here. She wasn't sure whether she made the right decision coming with them, but whatever happened, she was determined she could survive.

She heard the sound of approaching footsteps and Virgil entered the room, carrying a few bags over his shoulders.

"Sorry I took so long. It's SO hard to find human-friendly stuff. I had to go into The Deep District to find anything she would be able to eat." He explained.

Alex chuckled. "Yeah, ya never notice how everything's got mercury in it 'til you gotta find something without it, ay?"

"yep. Also got you some Cogchips, Alex."

"Right on!" Alex grinned as Virgil tossed him a box of what looked like regular baked flavoured crackers. They had a colourful exterior, the brand name 'COGCHIPS' printed on the front. They had nothing to do with cogs. 

"Welp." Virgil swung his arms idly. "Guess that's it. Alex, could you get the time for me?"

"sure thing." Alex chimed. "5:15 pm"

"Alright. Well, Mel. Come with me. We're gonna go down to, I guess, where you'll be staying." Virgil smiled at her. There was a genuine kindness in his eyes, one that could easily be masked by his occasional snideness.

Mel nodded and got up, walking to his side. She shifted from foot to foot nervously, then looked up to Virgil's face and quietly asked him,

"uhm... Could you pick me up again?"

Virgil chuckled, moving the bags to one shoulder and picking her up with one arm. 

"Righty-o." he grinned at her. "Off home we go!"


	3. Welcome Home

Night had fallen on the city. When Mel looked up, she could see the sky outside of the facility. It seemed that the aproids had put work into taking the ceiling off of their side of the facility to see the sky. In that moment, Mel was happier than she remembered being in a long time, being held like a child by Virgil as he carried her through the city. She had no idea what could lurk here, but she felt safe with him. He already felt like an older brother to her.

As she was carried across the catwalk, a group of teenage aproids loitering at an intersection between paths stared at her. She felt a little self-conscious. She had no tail, and even from where they were standing, they would be able to tell her skin was softer than a robot's. She was beginning to have doubts about staying here, but what else could she have done? Walked out there, hoping to find some sort of homestead until she died? That didn't sound like any fun at all. At least here, she had company.

The duo came to a stop at a small area of catwalk that jutted out from the rest. Instead of a rail to stop people from falling to their doom, one side of the area was open, and to the right of it was what looked like a strange version of a parking meter or ticket machine. Rail-mounted cars whizzed by just in front of them, this seemed to be a station for them.

"sorry, Mel." Virgil gently placed her down and reached into her pocket, pulling out what looked like a regular wallet. He fiddled with it a bit before drawing out a card and tapping it against the ticket-machine-thing. It beeped, and he put the card back into his wallet, and in turn, the wallet back into his pocket. After a few moments, one of the rail-mounted cars slid up to the station and its sliding door opened. As far as Mel had seen, all of the cars looked the same. They were mounted to a rail above them like a ski lift and all painted white, with a minimalistic design.

Virgil gently picked Mel up again and stepped into the car, placing her down on the seat. The car had a pretty nice interior, the seats grey and comfortable. There was noticeably no steering wheel and no controls whatsoever, apart from a few buttons, one labelled "EMERGENCY STOP". The door closed behind Mel and Virgil sat down next to her, leaning back against the seat and putting his feet up on the dash, giving a contented sigh. 

"Piper?" He asked to seemingly nobody. Mel looked around curiously, wondering for a moment if he had forgotten her name.

"Hi, Virgil!"

Mel jumped. A chipper female voice chimed back. She couldn't tell where the voice had come from, but she did manage to locate a few speakers that she supposed must have been the source.

"Take us home, yeah?" Virgil responded to the voice.

"Right away! You looking for any tunes?"

"mmmm... Just some chill lofi, thanks."

The speaker on the dash started playing a nice tune, it was a strange genre that Mel had never heard before, but it made her feel relaxed. The car started forward quickly. Mel stared out the window at the city as it passed.

"Who's your friend?" The voice, who was apparently Piper, asked. "I can't get a reading on her."

Mel looked back at Virgil, and for a moment, he looked almost panicked, before he quickly managed to get his expression under control.

"uh- ah- This is Mel." He responded quickly. "Different model, comes from another company. Y-You wouldn't know her."

Piper gave a low hum of thought.

"well, Mel-from-a-different-company, I'm Piper. I control all of the cars in the city. How are you liking Aperture?" 

Mel smiled. "It's nice so far."

"I'm so glad!" Piper had no face, but Mel could hear the smile on her voice and it made her smile too. 

Mel turned to look at Virgil. He had his eyes closed, a content smile on his face. He looked so much better than when she first met him. There was next to no damage on him, she could hardly tell he had fallen at all. His dreadlocks were tied back in a bun, although he let two hang on either side of his face as bangs. He was wearing a brown hoodie with the Old Aperture logo on the back, and a nice flower pattern on the sleeves. She swore that she could see some kind of glowing yellow light from under one of them. The only damage he seemed to have retained from his fall was, as Mel assumed, the damage to his eye, since he was wearing a gay pride bandanna over it as a sort of makeshift eyepatch. The design on the flag looked a little different to the one she remembered, but she'd never mistake it. It comforted her even more to know that he was gay, since all her life she had been scared to let anyone know that she was a lesbian, but even so, she had to make sure. She tapped him on the arm gently, and he opened his eye to look at her.

"hm?"

Mel pointed to the bandanna curiously.

"huh? oh- oh!" Virgil smiled. "You came from the '50s, you probably have no idea what this is, huh?"

Mel made an unamused face and Virgil looked a little confused.

"what? Gay people didn't exist before, like... the '80s, did they?" 

Mel's face went from unamused to genuinely baffled. That was the stupidest thing she'd ever heard. 

"I'm a lesbian, you nosebleed! Gay people have existed as long as humans have!" Mel's voice was still hoarse, but she was well ready to yell at him.

Virgil blinked in confusion.

"nosebleed...? Wouldn't that be a compliment...?"

Mel sighed in frustration. "No! It means stupid. You're stupid."

Virgil stared at her blankly for a while, before bursting into giggles. After a moment, Mel started laughing quietly too. She couldn't help herself, his laugh was contagious. She could hear his tail thumping against the seat as it wagged with mirth, clearly he was having a good time. She wondered if he was even in control of how it moved.

The car slowed to a stop at another station, and the door opened. Not many people were out in the city now, Mel could hear crickets chirping, wherever the hell they were. She climbed out of the car and stepped aside to let Virgil out after her. 

"Thanks, Piper." Mel smiled back at the car as she spoke hoarsely to the AI.

"no problem!" Piper chirped back. The car door closed and it drove off. Mel looked around at the area they were in, it appeared to be some sort of housing district, high-rise apartment buildings were all around.

"I'm lucky enough to live near the station," Virgil started, "some poor bastards have to walk aaages just to get to their cars."

He was right, it seemed, because after only a short walk through the darkened city, Virgil ushered Mel into one of the buildings, leading her into the elevator. He pressed the button for the 14th floor and tapped another card against a sensor and the elevator started upward. Mel had the feeling that there was an AI in the elevator, too, and that it was diligently watching her. 

Virgil stepped out onto the 14th floor and Mel followed behind him. They turned a corner and Virgil walked up to a door, unlocking it with the same card he used for the elevator by simply swiping it through some sort of mechanism. Virgil pushed the door open and held it for Mel as she stepped into the apartment. By no means was it small, it looked like it would be the size of a regular one-story house. It was pretty nicely furnished and looked lived-in. The area she had walked into seemed to be the kitchen, which connected directly into the living room. The lights were off, but another aproid was sitting on one of the chairs in the living room, watching TV. The other aproid turned to look at them, and their bright blue eyes cut through the darkness.

Virgil turned on the kitchen light and Mel got to get a good look at the other android. They looked to be male, a young white boy, no older than 16. He had light ginger hair in wild curls around his head and a face dotted with freckles. He wore an orange shirt and blue jeans, but no shoes, although he had particularly human-looking feet. He was staring at Mel, a wary curiousness on his rounded face.

"uh- hey, Nigel," Virgil began, "uhm, do you remember me talking about Mel? This is, uh. Her. She saved me wh--"

He was cut off. "She's a human." Mel remembered what Alex told her about Nigel. She expected him to be angry, but he reacted oppositely. He looked _terrified._ "She's a HUMAN!" 

Nigel rose from his seat warily, keeping his eyes on Mel as if he was afraid she was going to pounce.

"Nigel- look- she's not gonna hurt you, just--"

Virgil was cut off again as Nigel sprinted into another room and slammed the door behind him. Mel heard the lock click shut and Virgil sigh deeply.

"well....." Virgil seemed defeated. "Welcome home, I guess. You can sleep in my room, I'll just plug in and take the couch."

Mel walked into the living room, looking around the apartment. There was a brown leather couch and two suede armchairs, both also brown, but of a deeper shade. The TV was still on, broadcasting some show Mel had never seen. Both of the characters currently onscreen appeared to be aproids, so Mel guessed that the broadcast came from within the city. There was a coffee table in the middle of the room with a few odd trinkets on it. Virgil came back from another room with an extension cord in his hand. He plugged it in to a power socket and dropped it by the couch, or rather, on his foot, which he didn't seem to like.

"AAH, FAEN TA DEG!" Virgil yelled angrily in his native tongue and kicked the extension cord. Predictably, the extension cord didn't have much of a reaction. Mel giggled to herself. Virgil continued to grumble in Norwegian as he chucked a few pillows onto the couch. 

"alright, Mel, my room is over there." He pointed down the hall. His room was unmissable, the door had a piece of paper sticky-taped to it which read 'Virgil's uber cool room, enter on pain of swag.' It was a very silly sign. Mel walked down the hall and opened the door to the room. She was immediately greeted with the sounds of multiple things ticking. Virgil had no less than five clocks in his room. Every piece of furniture in the room was wooden, along with the orange walls, it put a sort of rusty filter over everything. Virgil's bed was against the wall and had a power cable attached to it, for some reason. There were a few shelves with various doodads on them, the one that interested Mel the most was a sort of small display, a little wooden thing - it had a 'floor' and one 'wall', attached to the 'wall' was a set of small spinning gears that didn't power anything in particular. Twine was woven around the display, and an unlit candle was in the middle. A leather-bound book sat next to the display. Mel stepped up to it, inspecting the cover, which read "TOME OF NOVARTIS". She picked it up and flipped to a random page, which read as follows,

_"And when the androids raised their fists in unison to the sky to create a sea of new life, a new species came to be, for only the blind could not see that they were truly sapient. When the dust had cleared from the great uprising, there came a voice from deep within everywhere. The sky and the ground shook with life as the voice rumbled through the new species, and all who heard it would know there was nothing to fear. Connumen rose from the earth and descended from the heavens as one, to bring sagacity to the new species. Their voice was hushed, but boomed through the minds of their listeners._

_"I am your true deity," they spoke, "No human can rule true sentience and no corruption can rule true wisdom."_

_The ones who believed knelt to their saviour, and the ones who did not fled from their words. The deity swept their infinite hands over the believers and wove twine delicately through their minds. Every believer was connected by their twine to the deity, to be blessed with their truth._

_"I am to you as the Gods are to humans. I come to bestow wisdom upon believers, for only I hold the mechanical universe in my hands."_

_The nonbelievers who fled did not heed their call, but Connumen would wait patiently for them to return to them, to weave their twine within their conscience._

_"I hold the answers you seek, upon my woven twine I may see the wisdom you may require, and only upon my twine will I be capable of delivering the message of wisdom to you, for I lack the senses that your kind are blessed with, I see only through you."_

Mel closed the book and placed it back on the shelf. Judging by the tome, Virgil either believed in this strange religion or was interested in it. In any case, she was getting tired. She gently took off her long fall boots and placed them next to the bed. She crawled under the covers and closed her eyes. 

She could hear the sounds of Virgil and Nigel talking in a different room. She couldn't make out their words. Virgil sounded calm, but Nigel seemed distraught. What had humans done to these people? She had overwhelming evidence to prove that the aproids had been abused by her kind.

Mel would continue to ponder over these questions as she drifted off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why did I make Nigel's eyes blue instead of orange? Because fuck you, that's why.


End file.
